Okay, so obviously I'm gearing up for having my players deal with insect spirits. This is my second thread with the spirits as the subject of the thread.

I'm in the process of making a good merge NPC that they will be dealing with often, Wasp, by the way, and got confused when I was trying to develop her stats.

Now, for Wasp on the spirit table, it only lists Queen, Male, and Female, whereas for the other hive insects, it has Queen, Worker and Soldier. The book gives stats for flesh-form worker and soldier spirits, but not for male or female flesh forms. What gives? Are males workers and females soldiers, vice versa, or something completely different?

I understand that for lots of insect species (at least, for the kinds who live in colonies), the females are the ones who perform all the work, including defense of the colony. Males are just drones whose purpose in life is to mate with the queen. Anyway, I'd assume that both Workers and Soldiers are female.

and the males are mostly happy, if a bit competitive

I would agree with Fangirl, but insect spirits are different from normal insects. They have to be invested in a human host. In the case of mantids, the host gender matters. In the case of flys it may not (a fly spirit in a female host is identified as male in Missing Blood).

For the most part, I wouldn't take gender into consideration at all. Different genders do not have different stats in SR and that extends to insects. A Soldier is a Soldier and a Worker is a Worker regardless of the gender of the host or the spirit.

Okay. It was just very confusing seeing as they offered the differing True Spirit stats for Male and Female for Wasps, but then also offered Worker and Soldier for Ants.

Heh.

Needless to say, this chica is going to be one badass motherfragger when she finally doublecrosses them... who would think that their little Asian lady Johnson is more deadly than her tough-looking bodyguards XD

Ahh, Wasps have no caste system (from Universal Brotherhood).
Personally, I'd treat all Wasp Flesh Forms as soldiers since all can sting.

it might help if you told us who your players are James. Then I'd be happy to!

Do not confuse the gender of the host body, with the gender of the spirit.
Queens seem to need to be femal but for others it does not matter.


The only exception are mantids. They seem to keep things straight that way.